


To Walk Upon the Earth

by FireEye



Category: Final Fantasy I
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 04:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17052782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: The last Elite force of the most advanced and powerful civilization are stripped of their wings.





	To Walk Upon the Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ysavvryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/gifts).



An eerie creak reverberated through the hull.  Magicked though it was, it couldn’t hold back the crushing sense of isolation.  There was something primal about the ice surrounding them.  Something deep, dark... lacking malice, but no less dangerous for it.

Her crew could have been the only humans alive on the planet, and they would never have known otherwise.

 _Without the power of the Wind_...

The two of them sat in the galley, sharing a meager breakfast.  Supplies were low.  Contact with Elysium had been cut off for years, and even if they’d had contact, there were no reinforcements to send.  The airship was the last bastion of their civilization in the world, and it had been run aground.

Several days had passed, and yet Sparrow was unable to shake the feeling.

“Do you feel as though something is impeding our efforts?”

They had been investigating a tectonic upwelling in this quadrant.  Stress between the continental plates was building, concentrated beneath the Temple of Fire – once the only oasis on a continent of ice.  It was abandoned now, since the Light had faded from the elements and the ice encroached to reclaim it.  An eruption would have shifted the balance in this region; a large enough eruption, perhaps even worldwide.

The ice storm that had grounded them seemed almost convenient, from the right point of view.

Her sage adviser steepled his fingers.  Long ago, he’d given his name to a higher calling.  Sparrow was one of the few who remembered what it once was.

“What you suggest is _design_ ,” he stated, “beyond the hand of men.”

“Are you saying no mage could have sent that storm against us?” Sparrow asked.  “What of the elves?  Or the dwarves?”

“This land has been frozen for thousands of years.  No mortal mage could reach this far on their power alone.”

“Could we have a fairy on board?”

“Undetected?  Doubtful.”

Sparrow blew out a slow breath.

“...what of a dragon?”

The Mother of Dragons had, after all, taken Elysium.  And all who dwelled there.  Perhaps she had sent an emissary to track down the last of them.

And, like them, a dragon could fly.

“Have you ever known a dragon to down its prey without making itself known?”

Sparrow searched her memory, and the memories of her ancestors.  Dragons were intelligent, but prideful.  A dragon would have stayed for the fight, not skulked around in a cloud only to vanish.  Certainly not, having been sent, without ensuring its mark had been destroyed.  “No.”

“And yet?”

“And yet... I doubt, old friend.”  Forces were at work here beyond her comprehension, and yet... did she need to comprehend?  “If Tiamat-...”

The sage drew a protective sign.  Hardly a superstitious man, but to invoke the Fiend was to invite disaster.

“If the Mother of Dragons is not the enemy we thought, but merely the herald of our doom... if the encroaching darkness has a mind of its own...”

“The darkness itself...” the sage mused.  “ _Hrrm_.”

An uneasy silence fell between them.  Sparrow scraped her bowl with her crust of bread, and turned her head to gaze out the porthole.  It was midday, the sky beyond the glass was a deep harmonious blue, yet she could feel a shadow settling over them like a shroud.

Outside the airship, the ice groaned.

***

“Progress?”

“Yesterday, we were stuck in a glacier.  Today, we’re stuck in a glacier.  I’d say things are moving along most glacially.”

The mech-tech shook her head.  Ignoring her compatriot, she addressed Sparrow.  “Even if we can free the ship itself, the propellers are frozen, right down to the engine.  Not even magic seems to be cutting through this frost.”

Sparrow studied what lay before her.  The machinery was cold, the chill of it cutting through the enchanted hull.  If there was no salvaging the craft, then....

Turning from the engine, she regarded her crew.  A sage who had given himself over to the Mastery of the Eight Circles, his youthful apprentice, their ship’s mech-tech, and a low-ranking soldier whose only job was to do as she was told.

The last of the fabled Sky Warriors.

“We’ve seen everything there is to see from the sky,” she said.  “Maybe it’s time our feet touched the earth.”

“Abandon ship?”  The youngest among them was uncertain yet.  Earthborn, lacking the poise and grace of the ancients, lacking the memories of her ancestors.  In absence of the homeland, the ship had become her anchor.  “Walk among those that haven’t sailed the sky?”

“Better to take our chances out there than waste away in here,” the mech-tech said.

“Get some rest tonight,” Sparrow said.  “We’ll all need to be at our best to make it across the ice.  We might not survive out there, but we’ll die if we stay here.”

***

Morning cut across the ice, cold and harsh, casting the world in deep aqua blue.  Frozen ripples stretched underfoot as far as the eye could see, with the occasional dusting of white.  It was walking on the ocean, frozen in place.

“And so, the last of our world is laid to ruin,” the sage remarked.  Elysium was beyond the reach of men.  The fleet was destroyed.  In time, the airship would sink into the heart of the glacier and the last high technology of their civilization would truly be gone.  The legacy of their people, the remote the mech-tech now flipped in his hand.

Sparrow shook her head.

“We knew when we set out this wasn’t going to be easy,” she reminded him.  “This isn’t about our people anymore.  The entire world is in peril.”

In her mind, as they stepped forth from the shadow of the airship and set across the barren glacier, Sparrow only knew one thing for certain.

They had to make it across the ice.  They had to find the root of the decay.

After all, who else in the world could?

One sage, one mage, a mech-tech, a soldier, and an officer.

Five Sky Warriors against the tide of darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Some indulgent characterization exploration for you, please enjoy.


End file.
